Replacing Home

I love the apartment I live in. Everyone who knows me knows that. I’ve loved it since the day I first inspected it, six years ago.

For a long time, I’ve known this apartment might not be my forever home. I’ve thought about moving more than once, for all sorts of reasons. But every time I did, I ran into the same problem.

I couldn’t figure out how to replace home.

I could replace the apartment. I could replace almost everything else. But I couldn’t replace the life I’ve built here.

The strange thing is that I know I could probably find a “better” apartment. Bigger. Newer. More accessible. Maybe even one I’d own.

But home has never been about square metres or stone benchtops.

It’s about the life I’ve built inside four walls.

When I moved in, it was just an apartment. A stepping stone to wherever I was going to end up. It was never supposed to be my forever home, even though part of me wanted it to be.

This place soon became where I learned how to go out on my own, walking out the door with no one knowing where I was.

It was where I learned I was capable of far more independence than I’d ever imagined.

I could manage everything myself. I could be an adult who was responsible for my own life. Yes, some things weren’t done on time, or at all, but I kept myself alive.

For a while, I learned that independence wasn’t free. Every bit of freedom I gained seemed to ask a little more of my body in return.

This apartment has seen more versions of me than almost anyone has.

It’s seen me go from depending on people for almost everything, to reducing my supports to what was necessary, and then back to needing full-time support again. It’s where I learned that my body has limits I can’t simply ignore, no matter how determined I am. For a while, I could push through almost anything. Eventually, my body stopped letting me.

It’s where I came home after brain surgery. It’s where I lived through some of the darkest moments of my recovery, wondering what my future was going to look like. But it’s also where I slowly began putting that future back together.

It’s where Winter came home. It’s where I admitted writing wasn’t just something I enjoyed, but something I wanted to build a life around. It’s where an apartment quietly became the backdrop to the most important years of my adult life.

Somewhere along the way, without me ever really noticing, it stopped being the place where I lived.

It became home.

For years, that thought has sat quietly in the back of my mind. One day, I might have to leave.

Recently, it’s become harder to ignore.

As the disability sector changes and conversations around housing, supported accommodation and the future of the NDIS become increasingly uncertain, I’ve found myself thinking about home more than I ever used to. Not because anyone has told me I have to move. Not because I’m planning to. But because I’ve realised that something I’ve always assumed would be there suddenly doesn’t feel quite as guaranteed.

I currently live in a Specialist Disability Accommodation property by myself. It’s the home that has made my independence possible for the last six years.

I’m incredibly fortunate to have it. A lot of people and I fought tooth and nail for me to get this property.

But like many people with disabilities, I’ve found myself paying closer attention to conversations about housing and the future of disability supports than I ever used to. Not because my circumstances have suddenly changed overnight, but because those conversations have reminded me that even the places we feel safest can also feel uncertain.

This is not just a house to me. I’d already been living independently for two years. But moving here transformed what that independence looked like.

For the first time, housing wasn’t consuming every spare dollar I had. I could focus on living instead of simply trying to stay afloat. My doors are automated. I’m in the middle of the CBD, so I’m not far from anything.

I have grown so much as a person here. I’ve learned how to go out reasonably independently and built a community of people who know me and care about me. I’ve become a completely different person, someone who knows what she wants in life, most of the time.

I’ve brought friends here. Occasionally, even a date. I came home here after brain surgery. I rebuilt my life here, more than once. Winter came home here, and I became a mother. I decided that writing was the only thing I wanted to build a career around.

Somewhere between all of those ordinary moments, I built a life that was for no one but myself.

I used to think I couldn’t imagine leaving because I loved the apartment. Now I realise it was never really about the apartment, at least not completely. It was about everything that became possible because of it.

I don’t know whether this apartment will be my forever home.

I hope it is.

But I finally understand why the thought of leaving has always felt so impossible.

I wasn’t trying to replace an apartment.

I was trying to replace six years of becoming the person I am today.